An efficient architecture for real-time narrowband beamforming

A short finite impulse response (FIR) filter architecture for narrowband beamforming is presented that is well suited for active sonar applications. By applying the technique of adaptive modeling, a short FIR filter can be designed to carry out any required narrowband constant phase shift. A 4-tap FIR filter designed in this way can generate constant phase shift within bandwidths of 0.04 (relative to the sampling frequency), with an error of less than 1°. Thus a beam can be formed with a bank of short FIR filters, each filter corresponding to one sensor. Due to the light computational load of this method, it is rather convenient for digital signal processors (DSP) to implement beamforming in real time. Satisfactory sonar beam patterns are shown to result from a TMS320C25-based emulation of the architecture